While Downtown and mid town ramen chains are slowly creeping up north and expanding their footprints, we have an independent ramen place that popped up in the last year near the Cathedral Town area by the name of Koi Sakana. This ramen place is tiny even in comparison to other small ramen places. It's a Chinese operated place but clearly shows effort in wanting to put a quality product on the table.
I've tried Koi Sakana twice, once as a Uber pickup and the second time as a dine in experience. The experience could be summarized by the analogy 'the body is present but the soul is clearly missing'. What I mean by that is that toppings generally were decent but the soup, which essentially is the soul of a bowl of ramen, is not quite there yet.
The first go at it, I took advantage of the buy one get one free deal on Uber for the maple wood duck breast shoyu ramen. It's a more new age ramen. The duck breast had an appropriate amount of Smokey taste, the shoyu soup based was adequate and the noodle was passable.
For the second visit, we ordered the Hokkaido Ramen with karaage, the tonkotsu ramen and the pork cartilage ramen. All three had some sort of pork bone soup base to it. The plus is that the soup was not overly salty, but it was on the heavy side and had a bit of a porky taste that I'm not used to. I'm guessing that has to do with the quality of bones and meat that were chosen or maybe the preparation process. Again, the noodle is passable.
The toppings in general were fine. The eggs had a runny center and were well marinated. The chashu tasted good but could be sliced slightly thinner and the fat portion is not fully there from a melt in your mouth standpoint. The cartilage was surprisingly well marinated but I wish it had a higher ratio of cartilage vs meat. Finally, although the karaage was not totally authentic but the batter was nice and crunchy and the chicken was moist.
I'm very much a traditionalist when it comes to ramen. Surprisingly, I'm a bigger fan of the smoked duck ramen with a modern slant as opposed to the good old fashion tonkotsu ramen.
The service in general was alright. If I just don't feel like driving anywhere far to satisfy my ramen craving, I might drop by Koi Sakana again, but it's not going to be a place that I must come back to. read more